Word: guru
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...poetry reading at the University of Arizona, Ginsberg held a typically empurpled news conference; then he began berating Arizona Republic Correspondent Bob Thomas about a story that had appeared in the Tucson Daily Citizen criticizing the poet for his self-proclaimed sexual aberrations. When Thomas finally walked away, the guru followed and shouted a string of obscenities at him. Mother, whose day is celebrated this week, seemed to have a prominent place in the epithets. Whereupon Thomas wheeled and clouted Ginsberg twice on his shrub-bordered mouth. "Ah, those were only words I was speaking!" cried Ginsberg. Replied Thomas...
...examination of cultural dissolution and personal disillusion does much to restore the film to its proper stature-as a souvenir of a time already in recession. Sooner than anyone imagines, The Guru will serve to remind audiences of that peculiar, irretrievable time when Mod dogs and Englishmen went out in the noonday...
Most foreign words visit the English language with a limited visa; a few stay on for life. Very likely, the word guru is a temporary resident, booked for a return trip to India. Some future etymologist studying the phrases of the '60s will do well, then, to examine the content of the film The Guru. It provides a more acute and melancholy definition than any current dictionary...
...sitar. He pledges his fealty to a musician-mystic (Utpal Dutt) and becomes involved with a clattering entourage of fellow acolytes, musicians and the mandatory wide-eyed British bird (Rita Tushingham). Like Mia Farrow with the Maharishi, the singer finds that his lessons are exercises in disenchantment. The guru prates of selflessness but demands instant obedience to his whims. He hints of asceticism and keeps two wives busy and jealous. He considers himself a brilliant musician -until his guru denounces his technique as commercial flash and filigree...
Unfortunately, once he has provided the detailed backdrop, Ivory and his co-scenarist, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, neglect most of the objects in the foreground. A face outlined here, a figure there, and they consider the task completed. It is not. The guru and the singer may be alive; the rest are actors sitting for sketches with only the vaguest dimension or purpose. Moreover, lines like "I feel so trapped. No one here understands me" tend to mock the film's painfully straight face...